The present invention relates to a printing system, and more particularly, it relates to a suitable configuration of a printing system for automatically operating and controlling plural sets of printing devices such as printers using an electrophotographic process or an ink jet process, and/or off-set printing machines for printing images using coloring agents such as toners or inks in liquid-state on printing media.
As prior art, there are known such printing devices as electrophotographic printers, ink jet printers and off-set printing machines.
For any printing devices such as electrophotographic printers, ink jet printers, off-set printing machines and relief-printing machines that print coloring agents such as toners or liquid inks onto printing media, an engineer or operator needs to carry out various operations and trouble-shooting including reloading of printing media, collecting of printed documents, replenishing of coloring agents, collection of waste coloring agents discharged during printing, cleaning of non-printed coloring agents and paper dregs which have been attached as stains and remain inside the printing devices, and coping with jamming of printing media under handling. A single operator can handle at most 5 printing devices a day in view of a standard work load involved. Depending on a work load, it sometimes occurs that a crew of plural operators is needed to fix one printing apparatus.
In addition to the above chores, a maintenance engineer or operator is needed to take care of replacing expendable items or exchanging parts in each printing devices. The expendable items, in case of electrophotographic printers, for example, include a photoconductor drum, heat fusing roller, toner cleaner brush and so on.
In particular, with respect to means for supplying coloring agents which are consumed in greater quantities, there is known such a prior art disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 58-57962, in which ink is distributed and supplied to each of plural ink jet printer devices from a single ink supply reservoir.
Further, after collecting of printed documents, there is needed a post-process such as cutting of printed documents, sorting, book-binding and the like. In particular, in case the printing media is provided in a long roll paper or a fan fold paper, cutting process is required before the post-process. A number of workers are required in the post-process to carry out cutting of the printed media, sorting, book-binding and the like.
Further, with respect to operational environments around the printing devices, due to volatile odorous substances contained in the coloring agents or due to ozone generated during charging process in the electrophotographic printer, there sometimes occurs such a problem that the work environment deteriorates substantially or life-cycles of components and parts in the printing devices are shortened by these by-product substances. Although some countermeasures have been taken against such problems, since each printing device must be equipped with environmental protection gadgets such as an ozone filter, additional expenditures such as for exchanging filters and related operations are incurred.
As another related art, there is known such a system as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2-188244.
In the above-mentioned prior art, however, there have been made no specific considerations about quantities of workload required for operation of the printing devices, i.e., for replacing expendable items and exchange components and parts in the printing device, and for the post-process such as cutting the printed media, sorting, book-binding and the like. Thereby, there was a problem that in order to operate smoothly and maintain the printing device in a good condition, a number of operators and service engineers are called for, and many other workers are required as well in the postprocessing thereof in order to arrange the printed papers in a preferred, suitable condition ready for use by users, such chores include cutting, sorting, bookbinding and the like.
Further, since there have been made no adequate attempts successfully to provide for a better operating environment and its efficient maintenance during operation of the printing devices, there was another problem associated with the prior art that due to odorous substances emitted from coloring agents or due to ozone from the electrophotographic printer, the operational environment deteriorated, or an adverse effect was incurred on the printing device and its components. Further, if any countermeasure against this were taken, there is a problem that a substantial expenditure and workload will incur.